Video: The left’s got a fever and the only prescription is Elizabeth Warren talking about tax hikes

posted at 3:29 pm on September 22, 2011 by Allahpundit

I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless — keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

What I like about this is how unbothered it is by the question of what the factory owner’s fair share of taxes might be. The implication, clearly, is that no amount would ever be fair. “We” built an entire civic infrastructure around this factory, without which it couldn’t operate, so really the factory owner can never thank us enough. It’s a blank check for tax hikes unto eternity. In essence: “I helped pay for that sidewalk, now give me your wallet.” In fact, if you had no knowledge of American tax law while listening to this shpiel, you might reasonably conclude that “factory owners” pay no taxes at all. They’re complete free riders — using the roads, relying on the police, making bank off the backs of public-educated workers, and never offering so much as a thin dime to the system in gratitude. In reality, that factory owner is paying for more of that road, public school, and cop’s salary than you or I are. Beyond that, though, I’m amazed at how easily she overlooks the wealth created by the factory as a contribution to society. Not all of it ends up in the owner’s pocket, even though he/she assumed the massive risk of starting the plant. The factory provides jobs; it generates demand for suppliers; and if it’s successful it cranks out a product that others use to generate wealth of their own. And the more wealth there is, the easier it is to pay for those roads and cops and schools. Memo from factory owners to Warren: You’re welcome.

The reason this is a viral hit on the left, of course, is because they think most of their political problems boil down to “messaging.” Their platform is foolproof — genius top to bottom — but the sheer ingenious complexity of the scheme means they have trouble explaining it to the common voting yokel. Case in point: ObamaCare. The program’s obviously brilliant, but poor O had a devil of a time explaining why in those 500 speeches he gave on it. Warren has them buzzing because, if this clip is indicative, she has a knack for explaining how rich parasites are getting fat off The People in terms average voters might understand. I don’t begrudge them a little viral excitement; lord knows, we’ve had endless fun with Chris Christie’s clips. But at least Christie’s focusing on entitlements, the long-term driver of America’s budget problems. Warren’s focusing on … this. Won’t solve much, but I’m sure it feels good.

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Congrats Sen. Scott Brown on your reelection. I think it’s safe to call it this early.

If Warren really believes this(and she sounded sincere in the clip), then the woman is insane. And a Communist. By her rationale, a person’s entire wealth essentially belongs to the state since one could not earn any of it without the assistance of their fellow taxpayers and the benefits provided by government services.

that’s such a stupid argument. Everyone agrees that teh gov’t has the power to tax and that certain functions are appropriate to gov’t.

So what? claiming that nobody would be rich w/o the gov’t and therefore taxes should be raised is simply circular reasoning.

It is a purely communist argument – the state is our loving father and anything we have is a gift from teh state, which the state can take away at any time.

the argument isn’t whether “rich people” benefitted from roads, schools, law enforcement, etc. – of course they did as everyone else does.

The question is how much of those and other things should the gov’t be involved in doing, how much should the gov’t be spending on those things, and how much should taxes be.

to simply assert “hey, you get services for your taxes” as the reason to raise taxes is simply not an argument. Are the services appropriate? Are they cost effective? should the gov’t even be engaged in those services? Those are the questions.

Liberals should be ashamed that their god Obama has someone as stupid as this woman as an appointee.

I like the opposite…there is no public sector employee that has ever created any wealth on their own. They have used the tax dollars of the entrepreneurs to pay for their salaries, vacation time, health benefits, retirement plans, boondoggles,….etc..

Putting aside the fact that the people she is kvetching about are the ones who pay most of the taxes. More is never enough.

Notice the examples she provides. All of them are STATE and LOCAL government obligations. She doesn’t because she cannot justify the exorbitant excesses of Fed-zilla. Roads, firemen, cops, teachers are not the job of the Feds. The Constitution may as well be written ancient Greek for all the knowledge these public servants know about it.

Businesses are already paying road taxes, school taxes, taxes for fire and police, gas taxes, energy taxes, income taxes, payroll taxes, and a tax on telephones dedicated to paying off the debt from the Spanish-American War (1898).

What we are currently debating is whether or not the “Big Chunk” of money businesses are allowed to keep will be what remains after various taxes suck up 52% or 55%.

So, if you drive on roads, the government is responsible for your success or something?

Red Cloud on September 22, 2011 at 3:36 PM

That’s her economic philosophy in a nutshell. Emphasis on “nut”. Obviously no rational person would argue that a wealthy person doesn’t have a responsibility as a member of society to pay taxes to fund basic services. But she’s acting like someone who’s well off got that way by never paying a dime and screwing over everyone else.

Also, what Christie says is generally intelligent, not idiotic. this woman is opening her mouth and letting crap spill out – there is no brain activity involved.

“You have money? that’s right, you only have that money b/c of the gov’t. Now give it here.”

I suppose you could use the reverse to argue that criminals should not be prosecuted for evading taxes. After all, for instance, a drug dealer makes his money despite the law – he has to provide his own protection and logistics, etc. He cannot rely on law enforcement to protect him, nor courts to enforce contracts. Thus, he makes his money without relying on the social contract and therefore it is unfair to prosecute him for not paying taxes on that ill gotten wealth.

Warren’s salary is what, $160k per year? You know, Warren wouldn’t be getting a salary or the perks of her job if not for all the little people around her working and being taxed, therefore I move to take 3/4 of Warren’s pay and redistribute it to the less fortunate.

Of course Warren will happily go along with that for the good of the people.

In the poll topic, I did say the difference between Brown and Warren is huge. The left loves her and we don’t need to give the mainstream media the ability to anoint her a rising star of the democratic party.

If Scott Brown is a RINO we should make sure he stampedes the heck out of this socialist academic, who moonlights as a regulator. I’d rather have a moderate in the Senate, then a darling of the political left. If she’s in the nightly news will have near nightly quotes of her wisdom for all Americans, to set her up to be President.

Scott Brown is our best hope to stop her now. Mike Ditka regrets not taking a chance to stop Obama in 2004, let’s not have any more regrets. If you don’t like Brown (and a lot of people said so in the poll topic, saying it would be the same), I suggest you stay quiet and focus your energies on places where a real conservative could be a real chance in 2012 (Utah, Indiana, Florida, Nebraska, Montana, Ohio, Arizona, West Virginia, among others and most of all the White House). But lets not give our next President, this headache by screaming RINO at Brown.

Isn’t it half the workers who don’t pay a federal income tax? Or half the adults? And don’t talk to me about payroll tax. That’s supposed to be a retirement program. So those who pay no tax … and presumably are paid for working at their job … what do we owe them?

Why does everyone mentions roads, and Mississippi (though not this time) when they talk about the necessity of the federal government? How many roads can we build?

You built a factory college out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods students to market college on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers enroll students the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory ivory tower campus because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory ivory tower campus — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Thanks for opening the Harvard Gate to us barbarians, and our kids too!

I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever. No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.

Nice to see that Harvard education paid off, comrade Warren.

What an insipid boob this woman is.

As someone else commented earlier. What about all those people living on their “entitlements” that WE pay for. Should they be allowed to go anywhere, since they’d have to use transportation, sidewalks, roads that they do NOT pay for? Hmmmmmmmm?

You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory

True!Before Obama, “You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory”, now like a “protection racket”, you should “worry about marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory” unless you pay up to Obama’s reelection cause!
Is this the Chicago way?

The implication, clearly, is that no amount would ever be fair. “We” built an entire civic infrastructure around this factory, without which it couldn’t operate, so really the factory owner can never thank us enough. It’s a blank check for tax hikes unto eternity. In essence: “I helped pay for that sidewalk, now give me your wallet.”

Clearly? No. Not what she said, and not what she meant. Quite a stretch for you to extrapolate all that, probably because all you have in response is the simple-minded elitist nonsense that we all need to bow down to the factory owner and relieve him from paying taxes because we’re so fortunate that he’ll allow us to participate in the business he built all by himself. In a vacuum. Job creators! Oh please, job creators! We’ll give you whatever you want, just don’t take away our jobs!

I don’t have a problem with a word in the excerpt. We d need to pay taxes to provide essential services. She just needs to define the word “hunk.” Keep that in the single digits, as a percentage of income, and we in agreement.

Face reality. The factory owners pay a lot of taxes. A lot higher percentage of their income does than you or I do. No one here is saying they shouldn’t pay taxes. They’re just saying that they probably already pay enough.

She’s the front runner only in a badly screwed poll. AP your observation about the factory owner appearing not to pay taxes is spot on. She makes it sound as if producers have no right to live and contribute nothing.

Clearly? No. Not what she said, and not what she meant. Quite a stretch for you to extrapolate all that, probably because all you have in response is the simple-minded elitist nonsense that we all need to bow down to the factory owner and relieve him from paying taxes because we’re so fortunate that he’ll allow us to participate in the business he built all by himself. In a vacuum. Job creators! Oh please, job creators! We’ll give you whatever you want, just don’t take away our jobs!

Will this kind of garbage work in MA? As for those who are worried that some of us don’t sufficiently love Sen. Brown…..I don’t vote there. I cheered him on, he is ok but I won’t be donating to his campaign.

Why does anyone owe more, and why does anyone deserve more, than they are paid for doing their job? Elizabeth Warren wants to speak loudly and strongly from the point of view of society, of the collective. Well, I’m part of that “society”, and I don’t want her speaking for me. I will help pay for minimal government services. Beyond that, I’d prefer to make my own decisions about what to give to the “collective”.